France shuts its borders to non-EU countries including Britain

France shuts its borders to non-EU countries including Britain for all but essential travel – while ruling out a third national lockdown

• French Prime Minister Jean Castex made the announcement on Friday night
• Travel ban will come into force from Sunday to try to limit spread of new variant
• He added that he was not announcing national lockdown, that’s still possible
• President Emmanuel Macron added: ‘Lockdown is a legitimate question… (but) we all know the heavy impact that has on all fronts’
• The closure does not apply to hauliers travelling between the United Kingdom and France, British transport minister Grant Shapps said following the news

France will shut its borders to all non-EU countries, including Britain, for all but essential travel, but has ruled out a third national lockdown.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex made the announcement on Friday, saying that the travel ban will come into force from Sunday to try to limit the spread of new variant cases of coronavirus from abroad.

Castex, speaking after a meeting of the country’s defence council, said he was not announcing a fresh national lockdown for now, adding that ‘the next few days will be decisive’ in terms of any possible new restrictions.

President Emmanuel Macron added: ‘Lockdown is a legitimate question… (but) we all know the heavy impact that has on all fronts.’

France’s decision to close its borders to countries outside the EU does not apply to hauliers travelling between the United Kingdom and France, British transport minister Grant Shapps said following the news on Friday.

‘French PM Jean Castex has announced that France is to close its borders to all countries outside the EU from Sunday. However, I can confirm that this does NOT apply to hauliers, so trade will continue to flow smoothly,’ Shapps said on Twitter 

French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that France will shut its borders to all non-EU countries, including Britain, for all but essential travel, but has ruled out a third lockdown

In an attempt to stem the number of new infections, Castex said big shopping centres – excluding those selling food – would be closed from Sunday and enforcement of the current 6pm curfew would be stepped up.

‘More police and gendarmes will be mobilised to check non-compliance with the curfew, the organisation of clandestine parties and the illegal opening of restaurants.’

He said only essential travel would be allowed to and from non-EU countries and all arrivals in France from inside the bloc except cross-border workers would be required to show a negative PCR test.

The requirement was previously imposed for air and sea travellers but would now also apply to those travelling by land too.

With schools and shops still open but restaurants and bars closed, France has fewer restrictions than some European neighbours.

The government, however, has been aware of growing fatigue among the public and alarm at the prospect of a third lockdown.

France has reported among the world’s highest virus death tolls, at 75,620, and more than 60 percent of its intensive care beds are occupied by virus patients.

‘More than ever we should do everything to respect the rules,’ Castex said.

France has reported among the world’s highest virus death tolls, at 75,620, and more than 60 percent of its intensive care beds are occupied by virus patients

The Czech Republic is also banning foreigners from entering the country for non-essential reasons in an effort to contain the pandemic.

The Foreign Ministry said the ban, which becomes effective on Saturday, applies for all countries.

The exceptions to the ban include those who work or study in the country. Trips to the country to visit relatives and nursing homes, receive medical care and attend weddings and funerals are also allowed.

The ban is part of a series of new restrictive measures that are tightening the country’s lockdown.

Earlier in January, the day-to-day increase in coronavirus cases in the country was gradually declining after hitting a record high of nearly 18,000 on January 6. But the numbers did not drop enough and started to rise again this week.

The government is also worried about the potential impact of the more contagious British variant on the health system, which has been under serious pressure for months. 

Friday also saw France’s president Emmanuel Macron astonishingly claim the AstraZeneca vaccine is ‘almost ineffective’ on people who are over 65 years of age.

Macron made the explosive comments despite the EU giving the AstraZeneca vaccine full approval to be rolled out to its member states on Friday.

His comments came as the EU’s vaccine war entered a dangerous new phase on Friday as the bloc introduced rules that will allow it to block life-saving jabs getting to Britain, while European politicians accused the UK of ‘hijacking’ doses.

Speaking to reporters only hours before the European Medecines Agency (EMA) recommended the vaccine for adults of all ages, Macron said there was ‘very little information’ available for the vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company and Oxford University. 

France’s president Emmanuel Macron (pictured Thursday) has astonishingly claimed the AstraZeneca vaccine is ‘almost ineffective’ on people who are over 65 years of age

‘Today we think that it is quasi-ineffective for people over 65,’ he told the reporters, his office confirmed to AFP news agency.

‘What I can tell you officially today is that the early results we have are not encouraging for 60 to 65-year-old people concerning AstraZeneca,’ he said.

Macron said he was awaiting the EMA’s verdict – which came later Friday – and also that of France’s own health authority ‘because they have the numbers’.

The French expert decision on the vaccine is expected at the start of next week, according to sources close to the health authority.

‘I don’t have any data, and I don’t have a scientific team of my own to look at the numbers,’ Macron acknowledged.

Meanwhile, Germany’s vaccine commission on Friday maintained its advice against using AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccines on older people, saying it was only 6.5 per cent effective for the age group.

‘The reason is because there is currently insufficient data on the effectiveness of the vaccines on people above 65 years old,’ said the commission known as STIKO.

The advice by the panel of medical experts will be taken into account by the government as it officially draws up its decree on usage of the vaccine.

Contrary to Macron’s claims, British scientists have insisted that Oxford University’s Covid vaccine will work on over-65s.

Doctors in England say elderly patients are already turning up worried that they will get a jab that won’t work for them because of ‘misleading’ news reports.

But the developers of the vaccine, Britain’s regulator and independent scientists say there is ‘really good evidence’ that the jab will work.

Even though it was only trialled on a small number of people over 65 – just 660 – before it was approved, lab tests showed that the immune response was strong, it was safe for people to take and appeared to affect elderly people as well as it did young people, for whom there is data proving it prevents Covid-19. 

Brussels is furious with AstraZeneca after it warned that it would only be able to deliver a fraction of the doses the EU had been expecting once the vaccine is approved for use 

Professor Anthony Harnden, the deputy chairman of the committee that decided the jabs priority list, vowed there was ‘really good evidence’ that it is ‘safe and effective’.

He added advisors in Berlin had made their decision because they have ‘lots of’ the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that they can prioritise for older patients, but fewer doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab.

Other scientists have warned the German figure is ‘misleading’ because of the uncertainty around their estimates due to a lack of data in the age group. 

But doctors have called for ‘clear messaging’ to the public to reassure them that the second jab approved is effective amid a barrage of queries from elderly Britons. 

Dr Jess Harvey, a GP in Shropshire, says she’s already had several patients come in worried about the jab and fears the situation will only ‘get worse’.

The comments come after Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday waded into the row, insisting that the vaccine will work and he was flanked by public health chiefs from PHE and the MHRA, the regulator that approved the jab.      

The EU’s health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, (left) said today that vaccine export controls are not targeting any specific country, while Ursula von der Leyen, (right) the German president of the European Commission, said the EU’s deal with the pharmaceutical giant is ‘crystal clear’

EU vaccine export ban could cut UK supplies 

The EU’s decision to introduce what amounts to an export ban on vaccines could affect the UK’s orders of millions of jabs made abroad. 

Brussels is currently trying to save face after its desire to introduce jabs across the 27 members states simultaneously left it lagging far behind the UK and other nations like Israel.

Today’s decision to require companies to have exports to certain countries approved before they are sent contains exemptions for many nations, but the United Kingdom is not on the list.

Britain is expecting to receive approximately nine million more jabs over the next three weeks from Oxford/AstraZeneca’s factories in Wrexham and Oxford and Pfizer/BioNTech’s production centre in Puurs, Belgium. 

If European leaders decide to blockade vaccine exports across the English Channel, the American drugs company Pfizer could be left unable to ship supplies bound for the UK. 

This would mean some of the 3.5million doses reportedly set to arrive by mid-February could get stuck inside the EU. 

AstraZeneca’s boss pledged earlier this year that the company would start supplying the UK with two million doses per week from the third week of January. 

These supplies from the two firms alone would be just enough to cover all of the 8.6million people outstanding in the top vaccine priority groups, but if deliveries are stopped or fall short, the target could be in jeopardy. 

Boris Johnson has repeatedly this week played down any threat to the UK’s vaccine supplies. And his spokesman, asked about the threat by the EU today, said: ”AstraZeneca has clearly stated that it will be able to provide two million doses a week and we have stated we will get them out to people as quickly as possible.’

He added: ‘The deals we have in place with the seven vaccine developers will ensure our supplies continue to grow.’  

It is not clear how many doses are already sitting in Britain’s warehouses, with ministers refusing to reveal numbers because of security concerns.

But No 10 has confirmed that they are distributing vaccines out as soon as they can after they are delivered from the manufacturers.

Additionally the Pfizer vaccine has to be kept at -70C in order to work.

What this means is that there are unlikely to be large stocks of vaccines sitting in reserve in UK warehouses, ready to take up the slack if there is any cut in deliveries.

Last night it was revealed the Novavax jab, which will be manufactured in Stockton-on-Tees, appears to be effective against both the original strain of coronavirus and a mutant strain first identified in Kent. 

The UK has secured access to 60 million doses of the new vaccine, but it has yet to be approved by the regulator. This means it will be available in the second half of this year at the earliest. 

The discussion about the right target age group for the vaccine has compounded controversy surrounding AstraZeneca’s vaccine. 

The European Commission Friday published a redacted version of its contract with the drugs giant, hoping to prove the company had breached a commitment on vaccine deliveries.

Brussels is furious with the pharmaceuticals company after it warned that it would only be able to deliver a fraction of the doses the EU had been expecting once the vaccine is approved for use in the bloc. 

Britain on Friday expressed ‘concern’ over the EU’s vaccine export control scheme, which sees Brussels partially suspend terms of the Brexit deal allowing goods to flow across the Irish border.

British minister Michael Gove called European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic to ‘express the UK’s concern over a lack of notification from the EU about its actions’, said a spokesman for the prime minister’s office.

The UK was ‘carefully considering its next steps’, he added.

The Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit deal allows goods to flow between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland without the need for customs checks at the border.

But there is a provision under Article 16 of the protocol for either party to unilaterally suspend the terms for specific goods if the agreement leads ‘to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist’.

Brussels on Friday invoked the article as part of a scheme to monitor and in some cases bar exports of vaccines produced in EU plants, amid a row with British-Swedish drugs giant AstraZeneca over supply.

Arlene Foster, leader of Northern Ireland’s loyalist Democratic Unionist Party, called the move to invoke Article 16 an ‘incredible act of hostility’.

She accused the EU of using Northern Ireland in ‘the most despicable manner – over the provision of a vaccine which is designed to save lives’.

Colum Eastwood, leader of the republican SDLP party, said the move was a ‘disproportionate and grave error’ by the EU.

Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney said on Twitter that the government was ‘working with the EU Commission to try resolve this issue’.

The EU said the measures were ‘justified as a safeguard measure… in order to avert serious societal difficulties due to a lack of supply threatening to disturb the orderly implementation of the vaccination campaigns in the Member States’, according to the BBC.

There is little or no physical infrastructure on the border due to processes put in place by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which brought to an end decades of violence between those who want Northern Ireland to remain British and those who want it to be part of the Irish republic.

Maintaining a ‘soft’ border was integral to negotiations between the two, with local leaders warning of a return to violence.

Brussels has been in a furious dispute with AstraZeneca this week, accusing it of breaching its contract by delaying deliveries to EU governments while maintaining those under a deal it signed earlier with the UK.

But Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides insisted: ‘We are not protecting ourselves against any specific country. And we’re not in competition or in a race against any country.’ 

With a presidential race coming up next year, Macron is facing criticism over the government’s handling of the pandemic, as well as its slow start to France’s vaccination campaign, which has seen just 1.81 vaccine doses administered per 100 people (as of January 26). The UK by comparison has vaccinated 11.25 per 100 people.

A curfew runs from 6 p.m until 6 a.m. every night but  Macron is under pressure to impose a third national lockdown since the crisis began almost a year ago as data shows another increase in hospitalisations and deaths.

‘The data shows that at this time the curfew is not putting enough of a brake on the spread of the virus,’ Attal told a news conference after Macron chaired a cabinet meeting.

Scenarios being discussed range from a very strict lockdown to maintaining the status quo, Attal said. It was unlikely no action would be taken, he said. 

Restaurants, bars, museums and ski resorts are closed in France but schools are still open. Shops remain open but with restrictions on the numbers allowed inside.

Macron is likely to wait until Saturday, two weeks after the curfew was lengthened, before deciding on the next step. Public opinion is split. An opinion poll on Wednesday showed 52 percent of French people opposed another tough lockdown. 

Macron is wary of the rapid spread of a new strain of Covid-19 and resulting deaths as seen in the UK – that would require stricter measures to halt – but is also concerned that more curbs on public freedoms may trigger acts of civil disobedience, a government official said, pointing to riots seen in the Netherlands. 

‘I know there is a fatigue,’ Gabriel Attal said during the press conference, before adding that the decision on whether to tighten measures or not would come down to health indicators.

During its first lockdown last spring, France closed all schools and universities and prohibited citizens from leaving their homes other than to buy groceries, carry out essential work, seek medical attention or exercise. Schools remained open during a less stringent confinement in the autumn.

The government’s top scientific adviser, Jean-Francois Delfraissy, said on Sunday a new lockdown was necessary but that it was for politicians to decide how tough to make it.

Failure to impose another lockdown would result in a very difficult March as a more contagious variant first detected in Britain becomes increasingly prevalent in France, Delfraissy said. 

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